


"Hi, In Shock, I'm Natasha."

by youwilllovemylaugh



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Meeting the Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 22:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1795672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youwilllovemylaugh/pseuds/youwilllovemylaugh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's supposed to meet Natasha's parents. But...</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Hi, In Shock, I'm Natasha."

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lordbyronsbloomers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordbyronsbloomers/gifts).



> Happy birthday, my love! I'm so sorry this took me forever and a day, but I hope you enjoy it! <3 <3

Clint woke up thirty minutes late to meet Natasha’s parents, head pounding at the same rate as his heart. He was dead meat. He hadn’t meant to do it, of course – he’d set three alarms, for chrissake – but somehow they hadn’t gone off, and here he was, sniffing the armpits of T-shirts lying around on his bedroom floor while he tugged his nice jeans – the dark ones without the holes – on over his hips. The phone was dead, he learned, after bashing the home button forty times with his left thumb as he hopped around, looking for clean socks. He plugged it in, and then dropped to the floor.

He hooked a glance over his shoulder at his roommate’s bed. Phil wasn’t in the room, thankfully, otherwise a whole load of guilt would have washed over Clint. Two hundred pounds of muscle hitting the floor didn’t exactly make a quiet _thud._ He pulled on his socks and then reached for the pile of T-shirts he hadn’t looked through yet. The room was a mess – or, at least his side of it was. Phil was almost a nuisance when it came to cleaning. He didn’t go to bed unless his shoes were all lined up on the far side of his wardrobe, and he didn’t leave for class until the corners of his bedspread were perfectly angular, the surface smooth as a placid pond. Natasha made fun of Phil for it – this was college, no one was going to care if his bedspread had a couple wrinkles in it, or if his shirts weren’t pristine, white, and starched to the nines. Clint mostly just felt guilty that he couldn’t keep his own shit together long enough to make himself an acceptable roommate.

But, then again, Phil had chosen to live with Clint again this year, and even if that was because he was still holding out some hope that his neat, orderly ways would rub off on him, Clint was grateful for the friendship.

Clint found a T-shirt, finally, one without swear words or obscene gestures on it, and one that smelled halfway decent. Natasha would know it wasn’t clean – she had a nose like a fucking badger, or something – and she’d probably be pissed about it, since he’d told him to do laundry last night, and _not_ to go out drinking with Thor Odinson, the hilarious exchange student Clint had just met. But she’d also probably be pissed that he was thirty minutes late to meet her parents, and he figured that was a more urgent offense than a dirty T-shirt.

Socks, pants, T-shirt. Clint went for his sneakers – he had three pairs, the everyday, the gym, and the nicer ones he usually reserved for nights out with Natasha – and found that only one of them was sitting in it usual place of squalor under his bed.

“Fuck,” he muttered, pushing aside the piles of papers and protein bar wrappers and empty beer cans that littered the space under his bed. “Goddamn it.” If he’d lined them up on the other side of his wardrobe like Phil did, he wouldn’t have this damn problem.

He let out an enormous sigh, big enough that when he leaned forward again to go looking for his shoe, he could smell the stale alcohol and mostly-digested pretzels on his breath that lingered in the air, and almost gagged.

“God _damn_ it,” he said. He tugged on his everyday sneakers, found his toothbrush in his shower caddy, and went down the hall to brush his teeth.

And ran straight into Natasha when he exited the bathroom.

She pushed him into the wall, pinned him there with her left arm on his collarbone and leaned up into his face. He was glad he’d gotten to brush his teeth.

“Where the _fuck_ have you been?” Natasha asked, her voice a low growl that made Clint’s stomach shrivel up inside him.

“I –”

“You know what, don’t answer that,” Natasha said, narrowing her eyes. “I can answer that for you. You were asleep. And by the looks of it, you were asleep because you were hung over. And you were hung over because you went out with Thor Odinson and got shitfaced last night instead of doing laundry like I told you to.”

Clint saw no way out of this one. So he just nodded. “You’re right. Yes.”

Natasha set her jaw. “Why?”

Clint gulped, gripped his toothbrush a little tighter. “I … I was nervous last night and I couldn’t think straight so I called Thor up and I decided to give that whole not-thinking-straight thing some sort of justification.”

Something in Natasha’s face changed – he wasn’t quite sure what. But she didn’t say anything, so he continued speaking.

“I … didn’t know what happened this morning. I set three alarms last night and none of them went off, and then I realized I never plugged the fucking thing in, and it died overnight, and then I couldn’t find my other shoe, and I –”

Natasha let up on his collarbone, and Clint relaxed against the wall. She let her arm drop back down to her side, but she remained standing as close to him as she had with her arm across his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he finished. “I’m really fucking sorry.”

He was looking down, now, at the place where their bodies still touched, and marveled at how quickly things had gotten serious for them. It’d only been a few months – four, at most, if Clint was correctly remembering the date Natasha had suggested as their first one. And here he was, agreeing to meet her parents and apologizing to her and meaning it like a real person instead of a shitty one. He was different. This was different. And now he’d fucked it up.

When he looked up again, Natasha was smiling.

“You lost your shoe in your _own_ room?” she said. Her eyebrows flew up and the corners of her pretty pink mouth drew apart, and then she was laughing at him, and the iron vise on Clint’s stomach loosened a little bit. “You’re a disgrace, Barton.”

There wasn’t any malice in her voice. He liked it when she called him Barton – and she knew that.

“Somehow, living with Phil these past two years hasn’t done anything to improve me, I know.”

“I don’t know how he lives with you.” Natasha smiled, and Clint took the opportunity to wrap his arms around her waist. She didn’t protest.

“Hey,” he said after a moment. “I’m really sorry about this morning.”

Natasha chuckled, this deep little noise that had first weirded Clint out, and then charmed him so thoroughly. “That’s okay. If your phone hadn’t died, you’d have gotten my text that said my parents hit traffic and won’t be here until later.”

Clint’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“You let me stand here and believe I was guilty?”

Natasha just grinned. “I like my men on their knees.”

“You pinned me against a _wall_ for this!” Natasha took a step back. Clint slapped a hand to his forehead. “I’m … I’m in shock, right now.”

“Hi, In Shock. I’m Natasha,” she said, holding out her hand, trying not to absolutely lose her shit. Clint stared at her, watched how the amber in her green eyes swirled around mischievously, and then took her hand and yanked her toward him.

“Fuck you,” he said, and when she opened her mouth to laugh, he kissed her.

“Come on, In Shock,” she said, after the kiss. “Let’s go find that other shoe of yours.”

They started down the hallway together. “I hope that doesn’t become your new name for me in my phone,” Clint said.

Natasha chuckled again. “I can’t make any promises.”


End file.
